Coal & Coca-Cola

This is a story about a woman in the 50's who borrowed $6,000 from a small town bank to start a bakery business to support 2 young children as a single Mom.

What I liked best about the story was the characters' positive attitudes and their willingness to overcome handicaps. Everyone involved in this story earned the bulldog name Linda gave her Mom, including the author, Ms. Shelnutt.

Throughout the story I could feel Mrs. Hudnall's overwhelming efforts 24/7 to win over and over again against the baker from Canon City who took bets in The Malt Shop before Marge's bakery was opened. He was betting that a woman wouldn't last a year as a professional baker.

Read this story to see how this mother used that bet as fuel to continue working a lifetime of grueling hours, maintaining a booming business and developing original recipes which I would bet people in Florence, Colorado still drool over today.

A story as inspirational as this is priceless. It couldn't have been told in a better way or by a finer person than the daughter of Marge Hudnall. This is much more than a memoir.

I was surprised to read that the author was a high school english teacher! Her story is full of typos, sentence fragments, and words that are capitalized when they don't need to be. Has she ever heard of telling a story in either first or third person? Why does the author feel the need to insert her opinion? Reading all her little comments really distracts from the story! Here are some examples, she spelled bus as buss. She abbreviated the state of Wyoming as WYO. "A long story, that." is not a sentence. "Unless you were look at their canines, I suppose" is not a sentence. "Just to know. Just to KNOW." is redundant and that's not a sentence either. Also, what did Coca-Cola have to do with this memoir? The story could of been interesting but her writing style really turned me off. If Linda Shelnutt went back to english class and turned in this story she'd fail.

Perusing this short story, I could almost taste the delightful goodies concocted in that bakery, and I could certainly inhale the scent...almost!

Ms. Shelnutt's descriptions are vivid, yet down-to-earth. When detailing the hardships her mother experienced in getting the bakery up and running in that downstairs basement, I could also feel the struggle and the determination. The labeling of her mother's "bulldog" spirit aptly characterized the tenacious woman and epitomized the true entrepreneurial gift she possessed.

I found myself rooting for her all through the story.

Linda Shelnutt apparently likes commas...I like dots, but we obviously share one very important thing in common, an abiding love for the stories of Ordinary People...a deep-seated realization that in the stories of the so-called ordinary or Common Person can be found all the creativity, courage and emotion worthy of ten 'celebrities' or 'big names' with their free passes to Big Name publishers and the eloquence-for-hire of their ad agencies.

Other than those who loved her, no one would be bothered taking a photo of Linda's mom Marge. They certainly wouldn't be bothered taking and retaking the photo, as was obviously done to get just the right multiple silk screen effect the big name publisher poured into getting hillary clinton's hard, angry face into the kind of almost human looks necessay to fool people into buying her ghostwritten story...

No...no one. I don't imagine the years were too kind to Marge, yet by the same token I can't help but think there was a fair amount of loving kindness not too far from the surface of her eyes and face...given the love and devotion she inspired in daughter Linda, not to mention a town full of satified customers and a certain energy just being a part of that large household of coal miner men [including Joe, who wasn't Sloppy] and entrepreneurial women.

I also picture a certain triumph in those tired eyes...the triumph that came not only from her successful battle against impossible odds to raise her family, but also her success in taking the recipie for her chop suey rolls "with her" after giving Sloppy Joes to the world!!!

Yes...I believe it!! I want to!!! It's just as simple as that!!! And she had my mouth watering so many different times in the course of those 18 pages I had no trouble believeing she would be just the person.

Yes, Coal and Coca Cola is the triumph of the common person! The kind of story that restores ones faith in the people that really count. It's a sensory delight about the kind of people that delight...that leave the lives of those they touch so much better than they found them. Not like the celebrities whose books sell. Five Stars!

John W. Cassell

I thoroughly enjoyed this heart felt tribute from daughter to mother. That may have been the intent of Linda Shelnutt when she wrote this story, but she, in essense, paid loving tribute to her whole family, her hometown and the way of life she grew up with. Way to go, Linda.

Joshua Berry
Author of Andrea's Dream and six Amazon Shorts (four online and two coming soon)